The Government Accountability Office publicly released a report September 19 entitled "Urban Hospitals: Factors Contributing to Selected Hospital Closures and Related Changes in Available Health Care Services."As noted in GAO's cover letter:"Hospitals play a critical role in delivering health care services to their communities. In 2022, nearly 30 million patients were admitted to approximately 4,500 general acute care hospitals nationally, and spending on hospital services accounted for about $1.38 trillion, nearly one-third of the $4.5 trillion in total health care spending in the U.S.[1] As of 2022, approximately half of U.S. general acute care hospitals were located in an urban area."There…
Medicare, Prior Authorization, and a Six-State Trial of AI
The US government is preparing to trial the use of artificial intelligence, large language models, and machine learning in a prior authorization review process for medical procedures under the Medicare program.The New York Times reports (Reed Abelson and Teddy Rosenbluth, "Medicare Will Require Prior Approval for Certain Procedures," NY Times, August 28, 2025):"The federal government plans to hire private companies to use artificial intelligence to determine whether patients would be covered for some procedures, like certain spine surgeries or steroid injections. Similar algorithms used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the…
WHO: Nursing workforce grows but disparities in access persist
May 15, 2025 A new report issued May 12 by the World Health Organization finds that "1 in 7 nurses worldwide – and 23% in high-income countries – are foreign-born, highlighting reliance on international migration."The WHO reports that: "The global nursing workforce has grown from 27.9 million in 2018 to 29.8 million in 2023, but wide disparities in the availability of nurses remain across regions and countries, according to the State of the World’s Nursing 2025 report, published by the World Health Organization (WHO), International Council of Nurses (ICN) and partners."The full report, State of the world’s nursing 2025: investing in education, jobs, leadership and…
Healthcare in the US Compared to Other High-Income Countries
August 6, 2021 On August 4, the Commonwealth Fund issued a new report entitled Mirror, Mirror 2021: Reflecting Poorly / Health Care in the US Compared to Other High-Income Countries. The report compares health care systems in eleven nations: the United States, Canada, Switzerland, France, Sweden, New Zealand, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, the Netherlands, and Norway. The report's key findings: "The top-performing countries overall are Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranks last overall, despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on health care. The U.S. ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity,…
Gallup: 11% of US Adults Unable to Afford or Access Quality Healthcare
April 2, 2025 Eleven percent of US adults are unable to afford or access quality healthcare, according to new research by Gallup and West Health.According to Gallup ("In U.S., Inability to Pay for Care, Medicine Hits New High," April 2, 2025, last accessed April 2, 2025):"The most notable increases since 2021 have occurred among Hispanic adults (up eight percentage points to 18%), Black adults (up five points to 14%,) and the lowest-income households, earning under $24,000 per year (up 11 points to 25%). Meanwhile, there has been no meaningful change in the proportion of White adults or middle- to high-income…
Healthcare Policies in US States: The Washington Cares Fund
March 6, 2025 The Washington Cares Fund is a long-term care insurance program operated by the state of Washington. According to the WA Cares Fund website (accessed March 6, 2025), "All working Washingtonians contribute a small percentage of their income into the fund. Then when you need care, you can access your earned benefit of $36,500 (adjusted up to inflation) to pay for services."According to the Washington State Standard ("Initiative to roll back Washington’s long-term care program fails," Nov. 5, 2024), "The program applies a 0.58% tax on the paychecks of workers in Washington. Beginning in July 2026, those who…
US Healthcare Spending Hits $4.9 Trillion
December 18, 2024 US healthcare spending continues to grow. According to an article in the journal Health Affairs (Anne B. Martin, Micah Hartman, Benjamin Washington, Aaron Catlin, and The National Health Expenditure Accounts Team, National Health Expenditures In 2023: Faster Growth As Insurance Coverage And Utilization Increased, Health Affairs (2024), doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2024.01375):"National health care spending reached $4.9 trillion in 2023 (or $14,570 per person), increasing 7.5 percent from 2022 (exhibit 1). This rate of growth was faster than in 2021 and 2022, when health care spending increased 4.2 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively. The lower growth during 2021 and 2022 was affected by the expiration of temporary federal funding…
Support Grows for Government-Run Health System
Gallup recently released results from its annual Health and Healthcare Poll, which are based on telephone interviews conducted November 6-20, 2024 with a random sample of 1,001 adults living in the US. The new data show that support for the US adopting a government-run healthcare system is growing.According to Gallup (Jeffrey M. Jones, "More in U.S. See Health Coverage as Government Responsibility," Gallup, Dec. 9, 2024):"Americans divide about evenly on this question, with 46% saying the U.S. should have a government-run healthcare system, while 49% are in favor of a system based mostly on private health insurance. Only in a…
Nearly One Fourth of Working Age Adults Underinsured, New Report Shows
November 22, 2024 The Commonwealth Fund on November 21, 2024 released a new report on insurance coverage in the US. According to The State of Health Insurance Coverage in the U.S.:"• More than half (56%) of U.S. working-age adults were insured all year with coverage adequate to ensure affordable access to care. But there are soft spots requiring policy attention: 9 percent of adults were uninsured, 12 percent had a gap in coverage over the past year, and 23 percent were underinsured, meaning they had coverage for a full year that didn’t provide them with affordable access to heath care."•…
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